Introduction

Welcome to Volume 3 of the special Chicago Sun-Times feature known as Chicago-pedia!

For the uninitiated, Chicago-pedia is part Chicago dictionary, part Chicago encyclopedia, with relatively brief items capturing our history, the present day, the way we speak — the people, places and things that make our region so unique and so special, as well as our lexicon.

If you notice levity at times, that’s by design. We’ve been known to inject a little humor and sarcasm into some of the definitions.

As well as social commentary — as you’ll see with certain chapters delving not only into the profound political divisions of recent years, but also the pandemic and the failings of our politicians and government, even our sports teams.

In these pages, we touch on unsavory events and savory food. The Great Chicago Fire and our biblical-scale flood of 1992. We offer a brand new section on the characteristics of “Our Town” — for instance, how we’re so sports-crazed that “Chicagoans might not know their mother’s middle name but they sure as hell know the starting quarterback for the Bears.”

Our esteemed film critic and columnist Richard Roeper offers movie definitions through a Chicago lens in our “Arts & Entertainment” pages, touching on, among others, late-great filmmaker John Hughes.

And we offer items inspired by you, the reader, who let us know after Volumes 1 and 2 of definitions we’d missed. Keep ’em coming if you’d like! Email us at chicagopedia@suntimes.com with any thoughts — suggestions or complaints. But ... let’s keep the latter to a minimum.

All definitions were written and researched by Sun-Times staffers past and present.

If you’d like to order extra copies of this edition, or the other two, please visit https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicagopedia. They make great gifts.

Thanks for helping us critique — and celebrate — this great city and its environs.